There is a specific kind of evil that the Western mind cannot process. It is the evil that looks at a hungry child and sees not a tragedy to be solved, but a weapon to be loaded.
A video from Gaza has been tearing across the internet. It was not filmed by the IDF. It was filmed by a courageous local, a man tired of the lies. It shows a Hamas-controlled warehouse in the Khan Younis area. Inside, it is not a war zone. It is a supermarket. Floor-to-ceiling stacks of baby formula, mountains of white flour, crates of medicine.
Outside those steel doors, Palestinian mothers are weeping for the cameras, begging for milk. Inside, the "Mujahideen" sit on a stockpile that could feed the entire southern strip for weeks.
This image—the starving child outside and the hoarded milk inside—is the perfect summary of this war. It is also the ultimate indictment of the Islamist ideology that has held Gaza hostage for two decades.
The vampire ideology
Why does the world struggle to understand this? Because we project our own morality onto our enemies.
In London, Paris and New York, we assume that a government’s first priority is the survival of its people. When we see starvation, we assume it is a failure of logistics or the result of a blockade. We cannot conceive of a regime that wants its own population to starve.
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Piles of humanitarian aid are waiting to be distributed in northern Gaza
(Photo: AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
But Islamism is not a normal political movement. It is a revolutionary theology that fetishizes death.
Hamas did not hoard that formula to sell it. They didn't even hoard it to feed their fighters. They hoarded it specifically to ensure that the images of starving babies would continue to flow.
They know that a photo of a gaunt infant is their air force. They know it neutralizes the Israeli military. They know it brings the United Nations to its knees.
The baby formula was locked away because a fed baby is useless to the jihad. A fed baby doesn't make the front page of the New York Times. A fed baby doesn't inspire protests at Columbia University. To Hamas, that milk was dangerous contraband—because it had the power to solve the very crisis they needed to perpetuate.
The West’s complicity
The horror is not that Hamas does this. The horror is that the West helps them.
For a year, the "civilized world" has played the role of the useful idiot. They sent the trucks. They paid the bills. The UN coordinated the delivery. And then, when the goods vanished into the terror tunnels, they turned around and blamed the only democracy in the region for "not doing enough."
A perverse ecosystem was built where the West funds the bait (the aid), Hamas sets the trap (the starvation) and Israel gets blamed for the catch.
This video strips away the excuses. You cannot say "Israel is blocking aid" when the warehouse is full. You cannot say "logistics are difficult" when the shelves are organized with military precision.
A war of truth
This is why the war against Hamas is not just a territorial dispute. It is a civilizational struggle.
Amine AyoubOn one side, you have a society that builds Iron Domes to protect its children. On the other, you have an ideology that builds cages for its children to starve in, so they can blame the other side.
The sheer cynicism of hoarding baby formula while your people cry out for food reveals the terminal cancer of political Islam. It views human beings—even its own—as disposable props in a divine theater.
If this video does not wake up the West, nothing will.
The hunger in Gaza is real. But the key to the pantry isn't held by an Israeli soldier. It is held by a masked terrorist who would rather watch his own people die than lose his propaganda war.
The "Starvation Libel" is over. We found the milk. And we found the monsters who hid it.
- Amine Ayoub, a Middle East Forum fellow, is a policy analyst and writer based in Morocco.